Esoterrorists

Robin D Laws has submitted the final draft of the forthcoming Pelgrane Press game, The Esoterrorists. My original brief was to create a set of investigation rules that aren't broken, and Robin's original proposal follows. He also proposed a default background for the ruleset. Most of the nitty-gritty didn't survive playtesting, but the original idea remains. I'll add more articles about the playtesting process which led to the final version in other article.

Concept: Elite investigators combat the plots of occult terrorists intent on shattering the population’s sense of collective reality.

 Mechanics: We replace the old Call of Cthulhu “one failed roll and the mystery grinds to a halt” syndrome with a resource management system.
 During character creation players choose their skills from a finely-delineated menu of investigative techniques. (Also a few broader adventuring skills like combat and so forth, but the emphasis is on different flavors of investigation.)
Examples: Forensic Pathology, Ballistics, Academic Research, Textual Analysis, Graphology, Interrogation, Charm, Intimidation.
Like Dying Earth, your ratings in each ability correspond to a number of points you have to spend on it.
However, rather than a reroll mechanism, the points you spend give you additional degrees of success on a skill attempt.
Having a skill in the first place assumes a certain base level of accomplishment. If you get to the right scene and try to use the skill, you always get at least a base success, which is enough to propel you further into the story, moving the group into the next scene.
So where in CoC you’d have a chance to find the Eldritch Tome containing the map to the basement, and roll Library to see if you do find it, in Esoterrorists a character with Academic Research automatically finds it. The scenario may also give you the option to spend points to enhance your success: 1 point might prevent the map from crumbling, so you don’t have to rely on your memory of it. 2 points might allow you to spot the marginalia written in the volume by the secondary villain, which gives you an edge in interrogating him when you catch him later in the scenario.
When facing active resistance (generally in the broader adventuring abilities, like Fighting or Acrobatics) you auction points to see who wins, with a coin toss adding a degree of unpredictability to the outcome.
Certain other successes in climactic situations may require that you have X number of points currently in your pool without requiring you to spend anything.